Apple's Record Plunge Into Debt Pool

Offering Sets Record; Demand Was More Than $50 Billion

By

Katy Burne and

Mike Cherney

Updated April 30, 2013 6:51 p.m. ET

Apple Inc. sold the largest corporate-bond deal in history Tuesday, a $17 billion offering investors hungrily gobbled up.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG sold the debt for Apple to investors in all corners of the credit markets, from buyers overseas to municipal-bond investors to portfolio managers who typically prefer ultrasafe government debt. Pension funds, insurance companies and hedge funds also joined in the...